In an interview with CNN en Espanol, Vice President Margarita Cedeno spoke out against any plans to change the 2010 Constitution to allow for consecutive presidential re-election.
Former First Lady Margarita Cedeno is the wife of former President Leonel Fernandez. Fernandez has announced plans to seek the ruling PLD party’s presidential candidacy in the 2016 election.
“We can not permit the Constitution to be subject to changes in an electoral time,” she said when interviewed by Ismael Cala on the Cala program broadcast by CNN en Espanol.
Cedeno said that 2010 Constitution was the result of the broadest consensus of political and citizen participation that had come together in the Dominican Republic. “It is a Constitution of which we are proud as citizens, as a people and as a party,” she said.
She clarified that the PLD is not against re-election. “What we do not back is the change the Constitution to foster re-election because we believe that the Constitution needs to be respected and strengthened.”
A 19 April 2015 meeting of the PLD Political Committee, the party’s highest deliberative body, approved changing the Constitution in order to reinsert a one-time consecutive re-election that would enable President Danilo Medina to be the PLD candidate in the 2016 presidential election. The measure was opposed by members loyal to former President Leonel Fernandez.
The PLD holds the majority in Congress, but still needs opposition votes to pass the reform, even if it succeeds in securing all the PLD votes.
The 2010 Constitution included a motion that allowed former President Leonel Fernandez to run for office again.
http://www.diariolibre.com/noticias/2015/05/06/i1135021_margarita-cedeo-opuesta-modificar-constitucin-medio-proceso-electoral.html